Bean's Quest is a gorgeous 2D platformer with a twist! Emilio has been cursed and his girlfriend kidnapped! Transformed by dark magic into a jumping bean, Emilio must bounce his way to victory through 50 levels spread over 5 worlds. Can Emilio rescue his one true love and find his missing pet axolotls? Bean's Quest is for Windows, Linux, Linux64 and MacOS X!
Ok, ultra-condensed review to fit the character limit.
First, problems:
1. Desura can't install the Linux version game due to server-side corruption. (However, manual install via tarball works)
2. People with non-widescreen screens (eg. my 1280x1024 LCD) must run windowed and manually pick a 16:9 resolution like 1280x720 or it'll crop rather than letterboxing.
3. While I recognize that some parts are meant to be pixellated, it's also obvious that some show scaling artifacts at the now-modest resolution of 1280x720. (For example, the text and character's outline in the title screen.)
Annoying, but not critical.
Gameplay:
I love the intro. It's cute, it's funny, it's basically the Mario story but that's unimportant.
I love the atmosphere. The music and and graphical design (with smiling clouds as moving platforms) make this the cheeriest game I've ever played. (Given the springboard design, probably takes influences from Sonic the Hedgehog.)
The title/menu screen music should run longer before it loops. It gets old too quickly.
The visuals have a bit of the overdone "smartphone-ness", but it's good enough to make everything ELSE feel like imitators.
I like puns and general silliness, so I like the villain stealing cute axolotls who say "thanxolotl!" when rescued.
The playable pseudo-level behind the level select is a nice little touch.
Having collectable gems lower resolution than everything else doesn't work. It's jarring. (Especially with the springboards for contrast.)
The controls are good but the difficulty curve on the collectables is a mess. (eg. Level 1 is fine, Level 2 and 3 are "try again from start" hell, then it gets easy again.)
All in all, fun but gives players a poor first impression. (The weird difficulty curve and things like the "can't try again without restarting" gem-collecting jump in Level 2 make it feel like a casual smartphone platformer as designed by someone whose only point of reference for difficulty is Super Meat Boy.)